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SILF 2014 - A Huge Success!

In partnership with HP, Step Up Silicon Valley, Cisco Systems, the San Francisco Bay
Area Chapter of the Social Enterprise Alliance, the City of San Jose Housing Department,
CommUniverCity, and the SJSU Center for Community Learning & Leadership, GLAC hosted
the 3rd annual Social Innovation Leadership Forum (SILF) on April 25, 2014 at San
Jose’s City Hall.

This year’s SILF reflected several leaps forward with an increased number of partners
(from 11 last year to 27 this year) and the growing realization of SILF’s potential.
There were 278 participants in attendance from various sectors, a 12% increase over
last year. With the help of the Terry Vahey, CIO of SJSU IT, and Cisco teams, we were
able to increase our virtual impact by providing WebEx and Telepresence support for
key sessions. The University of Notre Dame virtually presented their experiments to
measure social impact, and the afternoon community innovation challenge on educational
technology was led by a Cisco Sr. VP from Washington D.C. using telepresence. This
year more universities took part --University of Notre Dame, Marquette University,
Santa Clara University, Stanford University, University of San Francisco, and Mills
College -- as did seven SJSU colleges and CIES.

The morning agenda panels and interactive sessions laid the groundwork for the afternoon
Community Challenge in which participants brainstormed innovative solutions in two
problem tracks: 1) homelessness and 2) using educational technology to make learning
more accessible and engaging. Some groups are continuing to meet and attendees are
invited to join the accompanying network, SVSILN.

Bobbi Makani led the event as the Director of GLAC’s Silicon Valley Social Innovation
Initiative and did the heavy lifting for this event, together with the core planning
committee: Brad Maihack, AlmazNegash, Leslie Speer, John Swan, Dave Wilde, Derene
Allen, Lindsay Sierra, and Nick Judge. John Swan of Green Global Village was especially
helpful in recruiting facilitators and speakers. AlmazNegash of Step Up Silicon Valley
and Catholic Charities played a large role in outreach and promotion. The planning
committee members also made significant contributions: Ray Bramson, Maria Haase, Michael
Fallon, Dayana Salazar, and Antonio Aguilera. Thanks to Dean David Steele for his
support and to all who attended as speakers and participants. Year by year and college
by college, SJSU is becoming known for its role in advancing social innovation.

People are already looking forward to next year’s Fourth Annual SILF. We will share
the date and location when they are confirmed.

The 3rd Annual Silicon Valley Social Innovation

Leadership Forum

Learn. Collaborate. Lead!

Friday, April 25th, 2014 (8:00am-4:30pm)San Jose City Hall

A forum designed to network, share best practices, generate innovative ideas and build
leadership skills and capacity to advance community initiatives.

In Spring, 2013, 250 innovators and leaders from diverse backgrounds and sectors met
to discuss a common goal: positive social change to address social problems in our
community. The 2nd annual SILF embraced an "Un-conference” format that encourages participants propose
topics to self-organize, interact and collaborate. Partnerships and projects were
created on topics such as alleviating poverty in under-served neighborhoods.

SILF 2014 will build on this success, and will encourage leadership and collaboration
towards innovative solutions to important local problems. Although Silicon Valley
is home to some of the world’s most innovative high-tech companies, many social and
economic issues coexist alongside this prosperity: social inequity, access to healthcare,
unemployment, and high poverty levels. These issues become critical because of the
estimated 214,000 people living in poverty in Santa Clara County. Two common threads
that run across these social issues are education and housing. Education, because
it is a fundamental building block of individual economic growth, and housing, because
the housing cost to income ratio in Silicon Valley is considered as one of the highest
in the nation.

Our objective is to bring together social entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and change
agents from non-profits, business, government, education, and the community – to plan
and develop innovative and scalable cross-sector strategies and solutions to these
issues, and to develop initial plans to pilot these solutions.

We hope you will join SILF 2014 to share your ideas, to learn from others, as we work
together to address these important issues! Take this opportunity to meet fascinating
people, like-minded individuals, and prepare to both inspire others and to be inspired
by innovative leadership and collaborative ideas that will make a lasting contribution
to Silicon Valley.

The SILF 2013 is a follow on to this year's successful event where we had more than 100 participants representing several sectors: government,
private companies, education, non-profits, social entrepreneurs, startups, etc. For
this forum, we are embracing the “Unconference” theme, where YOU, the participant, will drive the selection of the topics and speakers
you want to hear!

Unconferences have been extremely successful in bringing together people from diverse
backgrounds to self-organize topics of the greatest interest to the group, with an
emphasis on interaction, discussion and collaboration.

More information about the forum and the "Unconference" format will be sent out in
January 2013. Please watch out for the email and participate. We need you to help
us create an event that focuses on your needs and interest!

On March 20, 2012 we co-sponsored an all-day Social Innovation Leadership Forum at
the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose. The purpose of this event was to bring together
social entrepreneurs, thinkers and leaders from non-profits, business, government
and the community to share innovation leadership lessons and help create a social
innovation network.

There is a growing need for innovators to address the many social problems and economic
challenges in our own backyard. Please visit the SI Leadership Forum 2012 home page to learn more about this event.

SHIFT Magazine

SHiFTis a unique, student-run magazine focused on innovation for the common good. Its goal
as a catalyst for social change in the Silicon Valley goes beyond merely reporting
facts to spurring its readers to action. SHiFT is published four times a year by students from San José State University. These
highly talented students are advised by industry veterans: Richard Okumoto - publisher-magazine,
Thomas Ulrich - editor-in-chief and journalism professor, Richard Sessions - publisher-web.
The Social Innovation Institute team are board members.

Social Innovation at the Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge

All SJSU students and alumni can submit their social innovation ideas in the Silicon
Valley Center for Entrepreneurship's annual Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge, held late Fall. There is a special award given to the best social innovation submission.